Silver Bearing
by Red Molly
Summary: The word Arizona comes from the Aztec word Arizuma. Silver Bearing. The land outside of Contention, Arizona, is no such thing, but when a young couple treads on what Wade and Co. consider theirs, the worth of life, to each group, comes to bear. Pre 3:10


A/N: I'm not new to writing, but I am new to fan-fics. This tale is slow moving to begin with, but if you bear with me, I promise to live up to the M-rating. As for pairings, you may guess as you like. :D This is un-betaed, so if anyone sees any typos or has a suggestion about structure, et cetera, please let me know! As with everybody, reviews would make my SEMESTER!

_A passion, in any sense, can never be call'd unreasonable, but when found'd on a false supposition, or when it chuses means insufficient for the design'd end._

_David Hume, __Treatise of Human Nature, __1739. _

March 7, 1876

The train rolled to a halt, steam hissing from beneath the engine as the conductor bawled out the name of the stop. Aaron unfolded his compact structure from the seat beside her, pulling his carpetbag down from the rack, then reaching to touch her on the shoulder. He was only half awake himself; his words were a hair disjointed.

"Contention, Mags. Come on. _Contention._"

She rose, travel weary, and shook her skirts out, fighting the hoops. "We're here?"

"Yes." The word 'finally' went unspoken, but they both heard it just the same. There was a quiet stir as the other passengers gathered their things, arranged themselves, and pressed their way toward the door at the back of the car. He took the crook of her elbow and guided Drowsy Maggie out into the aisle. As they reached him, the conductor nodded, with just a touch more kindness than he ordinarily carried in his gaze. _GOD_ he hoped those two made it.

"They'll have your gear and stock ready to come off of the cars in just a few minutes, folks," he said, addressing Magdelene like she was a precious thing. It made her uncomfortable.

"Thank you, Mr. Swanson."

She turned, taking Aaron's hand swiftly and stepping out into the cool of a Contention morning. Dust billowed from her steps, and her feet were aching. The sun veneered the buildings, thin, pastel, and looking as delicate as the frost that still clung to the hitching posts and the boards of the stock pens. It appeared, well, asleep, in the early light, like it couldn't quite get its eyes open until the sun got a little stronger. The stock-yard office fifty yards down the track from where they stood was weathered, beaten by the Arizona sun and blasted by the sand. The air was so cold that it rankled the nose, chapped the lips. No matter which direction Magdelene looked, there was no evidence of water; just sage, scrub, and rock. But….but there was something here that cried, begged to be believed in………..Mags wanted to scream. She was _home!_ For the first time in her wandering life, she was _home!!!! _

Aaron was looking north, his dark head cocked to one side. Magdelene stepped up beside him.

"Whatcha seeing, love?"

"Nothin' yet." He turned to her, smiling. "We've still got thirty miles riding between it and us." There was a grin tugging at his lips, but he packed it away before his wife could kiss it off his face. They heard the rattling of a wooden door on tracks and turned to watch.

Slash R horses clattered down the ramp, tired, hungry, thrusting greedy muzzles into the stock tank the second they made the holding pens. Magdelene marked the mares, the stallion, her bay gelding, and was satisfied. They were fine, clean-boned animals with fight in'em, bright eyes, and long, ropy muscle. _Fine_. She leaned on her husband's arm, smile stretching so far that her face hurt. All was well.

Aaron led off up the street, worried, looking, thinking too much as usual. His young wife, himself, Mags's three trunks and the wonders therein, his shoeing box, and brood stock. No wagon, no pulling team, no cabin, no windmill, no watertank, no barn and no corrals. It wasn't truly a whole lot to start with, and his wild excitement wasn't quite enough to keep him from seeing the reality of the situation. He wanted advice, needed it, and was unsure of where he could get it. He cocked a brow toward Mags, knowing she was about to have an opinion. Her head had been on a swivel ever since she stepped off of the train.

Her eyes were wide, soaking up the structures that were the City of Contention, Arizona, from the train station out. A livery. Saloon. Hotel. Mercantile (good; she started a list of supplies). Marshall's office (might be wise to speak to him). Millinery (surprise). Doctor's office. Newspaper? Her eyes lit at that. Newspaper meant books, and books meant new reading. Church. Contention _was_ coming up in the world, or at least it believed that to be the case.

Her eyes came back to the doctor's office, and she noted a light in the window. Decision reached, she veered toward the office front, and Aaron let her arm slip from his grasp.

"Mags?"

"Doctor."

He chuckled, and trusted his wife to do what she did best; ask questions until she got the answers she was looking for. "I'll get us a room then."

She flashed a smile back over her shoulder, gathered her skirts, and marched down the boardwalk toward the office front. Aaron crossed the street and watched his glorious woman step unannounced into the poor doctor's office. He could see them through the plate glass window at this angle. Doc didn't know what hit him. Aaron couldn't keep the laugh out of his eyes as he went about his business. That was a conversation he'd have to ask her about later. Maybe on the way out to their place……. He cracked a smile that matched his wife's and kept it all day, even though he got gipped on the price for the room and later, the flour.

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April 7, 1876

He'd just been looking for the gray. That's all he'd been doing. He found her, alright almost ten miles away from the house. She was down in a box canyon on the backside of the mountain, with an early colt on the ground (healthy, thank god), but………

How do you explain the appearance of ninety head of cattle on your ground? Aaron's knees had literally gone weak in the stirrups when he'd seen them. He stepped down off of his horse and leaned against the animal's shoulder before walking to the edge of the canyon wall to look down on them. The mare was on the backside of the canyon in front of the water hold, and she wouldn't let any of the cattle get near it or the foal. God in Heaven and his mother Mary.

He stared out over the red backs, listening to their heavy breathing and watching it rise in the frigid morning. They were young stock, _real_ young, some of them not even six months old. And judging by the coughing, he'd be willing to say that about a third of them had pneumonia. What sent chills down his spine though, was the glaring fact that not a one of these cattle had a brand on'em. Not a single man-made mark on a single flea-bitten hide. And better (?) yet, not a distinctive animal in the entire herd; not a bald face, not a mossy-horn, _nothing_. It was conceivable that these were wild cattle. Sure. He could say that. It was conceivable that cattle this young would run in a group this big. He could believe that too. Of course. He wanted to believe everything that he was seeing was merely good fortune. They were sick, but they were alive. There wasn't a man-made mark on'em _anywhere. _This was a **starting** herd. He could build an **empire** out of what was coughing phlegm in the canyon below him.

But what he knew was this: Cattle that young don't leave the herd they were born in when they're out running loose. Herds are _never_ that uniform when left to their own devices. And cattle this young didn't do too well unless they had somebody looking out for'em.

Aaron knew full well the danger of the prize before him. But _DAMN._

They _would_ show up in his box canyon too.

He took a steadying breath, and hauled himself back up on the sorrel mare. Yup. He was going to have to show this to Magdelene. He wheeled the horse and picked his way down to the flat. Once there, he set her up in a long trot and headed back toward the house.

Their house site was a clever one, or at least that's what Aaron had said, tucked back into the side of a hill, with a windy trail that, if you weren't paying attention, would take you right by the door of Aaron and Magdelene Rollins without you ever seeing it. Dugouts were good for things like that. In the time that Aaron had been gone that morning, she had finished setting the posts for the corral (_Joy! No more blisters from the tamping rod!_) and had begun work on pillow shams for the bed. Art is art, she reasoned, textile or not, and a good quilt pattern was as lovely as anything. She'd located a vein of clay two weeks earlier (_in the DESERT_) and had two pots baked. With practice, she would improve, but Magdelene knew that she'd never have the potter's hands that her mother did. But God in Heaven, this life was working!! Sitting on a flour cask in the sun with a shotgun at her side and her pillow-shams on her lap, she wanted to shout in triumph. She didn't know if it was the dry air of the desert or the fact that she was building a home with a man she loved more than her life, but she felt so light she could step off of any given ledge and hang there, floating above the canyon floor and sparkling like some weird calico bird in the sky.

And she was determined that they would have irises to set in a pot by the door next spring.

She saw the dust cloud a while before she saw the horse, and snapped to her feet. She exchanged the quilting for the shotgun, and in the glass, Wade watched her shoulders relax when she recognized the rider. She didn't part with the fire-arm, though, and he took good note of that.

When Charlie and Campos had come into camp, laughing at the ill-luck of the situation, and told him that there was a couple of greenhorns trying to bring up horses on the only ridgeline they had managed to keep Glenn Hollander out of, he had giggled, _giggled_ to himself as a southern man can, deep in the back of his throat, and evil. Hell of thing, though. Damn.

"Charlie, they look worth playing with?"

The gunman's eyes shot greener, flatter, for about half a second. "The woman might be. Man, though……" Prince's eyes trailed to the side, doubtful.

"Uh-huh." Wade swore to himself. "Woman?" Any man fool enough to bring a woman out into this country ought to be shot. Disgust rolled through him, blinding for a few seconds, and then he packed it away.

The look on Charlie's face bore studying, and so he did. Prince sipped at the black coffee and studied him over the rim of his cup in turn, and they spoke, as they often did, without verbal cue. Predators were generally good at that.

Campos squatted on the other side of the fire, a cold solidness to his expression. He would do as Senor Wade requested. It meant money. But he did not understand the problem. If the two people got in the way, Prince would kill the woman, and he would kill the man. It was that simple.

The cub, Jackson, turned in his bedroll and kicked out violently at the air.

Wade looked down, half-annoyance in his eyes as he kicked the boy awake. "Jackson."

The cub flailed to his feet, a knife in his fist and breathing violence and death. His pale hair flopped down into a highly Benjamin Wade planted a foot in his chest and knocked the boy over in the fire. In his panic, Jackson managed to roll out with little more than a singed shirt, and an entirely new respect for the hand that fed him.

"Get up. We've got cattle to move."

Prince had laughed.

Now he was flat as a snake on his stomach next to Wade, eyes searching the face of the dug-out and the woman with the twelve gauge in her strong hands. The husband rolled in to the yard, leaning over his tired horse, speaking low. He'd found the cattle, as they had expected, and….oh _my_, the tales being borne. Wade found himself chuckling as he took in the vibrant puzzlement on the man's face and the suddenly energetic stance of his wife. She wheeled, called out, and that bay that he'd noticed earlier flung his head up. He wasn't ground tied like the rest of the stock, and came barreling at his woman's yell. Huh.

Wade barely heard Charlie Prince shift next to him, and he offered the whip-cord man the glass. Prince clapped it to his right eye, and went still as he watched.

"She's left handed, boss. He's right."

"No shit."

The husband was holding the bay's reins as she slung the deep-seated side saddle up on the bay's back and worked the cinches herself. Prince giggled when she stepped up on the horse, hung one knee around the curved horn, and broke the shotgun open over her left arm, thumbing shells into the twin barrels with an apparent unconcern. Something about the possible threat of being blown in two by a strong-backed, careful woman sent a thrill through his already singing blood. Wouldn't be that bad a way to go. Something was said between husband and wife, and he laughed, clapping his hat down over her bright brown head.

"Oh lets go see our new cattle, dear." Prince pitched his voice squeaky, and Jackson cackled. Charlie kicked him.

Campos had already begun easing over the rim before the pair were out of sight, and Jackson started to drag after him, but took a look at Wade and thought better of it. Kid was learning. They lay on the rim-top for another fifteen minutes before the Yaqui whistled all clear, and then joined him at the dugout, looking over everything.

They were well stocked. There was water just around the corner from the house. There was grass in this little notch in the hill. There was grass all over this area, in fact, which is why they'd been using it as a relay station for cattle and horses. The dugout was tidy and well thought out, perhaps a twenty foot by ten foot room hollowed out of the mountainside, shored up with the biggest timber the couple had been able to find. There was a fireplace with andirons and a crude mantel settled toward the back end of the room, with a window right by the doorway on the other end. Something was beginning to boil over the fire, and Campos lifted the lid. A steamy waft of sage, dried onion, and something unfamiliar filled the air, and the Yaqui swung the pot out on the andiron to examine it more closely.

"It's done, senor," he remarked, leaving the lid sitting cock-eyed across the top. "Stew."

Wade chuckled from the other end of the room, examining the sides of venison hanging from the roof in what was apparently a pantry. Like the rest of the dugout, it was well thought-out; dried herbs of every kind, salt, sugar, flour, potatoes, all dry and packed tightly in casks. The twain had come prepared to make their lives here. That was not something he had bargained on.

There were shelves chunked out of the walls all the way around the interior of the dugout, some places four or five on top of each other, and lined with pieces of timber probably to keep the contents from collecting any moisture from the soil. He was becoming less and less surprised at their contents. Books on the human anatomy, treatment for rheumatism, tuberculosis, and various stomach complaints. A pamphlet on something called phrenology. Dickens. Locke. Descartes. Hume, even, and Ben had to laugh at that because he hadn't seen Hume in a long time. The Scarlett Letter. A diagram of a horse's foot was tacked on the wall right above a shoeing box, from the side and from the bottom. It was hand drawn, and just about right. The shoeing box itself was a good one, and the tools in it well used. The wooden handle on the rasp was just as shiny as the metal handles on the nippers. So he was a shoer _and _a doctor?

"Jack of all trades, ain't you?" he muttered aloud, and then snapped around when he heard a clatter. The men were in the stew, fishing out the meat and potatoes with their fingers, slurping the broth out of the smooth wooden bowls. After a while, he joined them, and was glad of it. "And she can _cook_. Quite the set up."

Prince agreed around a mouthful of potatoes. Campos was hunting through the pot for more meat (antelope, he guessed), and Jackson was all but licking his bowl to get out the last of the broth. Ben finished the last of his, set the bowl down with a clack on the table. The men looked up, wary of a sudden, and going quiet.

"You'll be leaving, now, gents."

Prince opened his mouth to protest. Campos rose to his feet, and Jackson, still being a pup, looked from man to man, uncertain from whom to take his cue. Ben looked straight into Charlie's face, and again, held that wordless discussion.

"_I don' feel right not doing this together."_

"_(chuckling) You'd scare'em, Charlie. Think about it." _

"_I can think all you want me to, but I don't hafta like it. (a pause) I ain't gonna….." _

"_Ain't gonna __**what,**__ Charlie?" _

Prince leaned back in his chair at that. Dammit he didn't like this. Not one bit. But he got up out of his chair anyways and left his boss in a dugout on a side of a hill that was hard to watch from any angle to wait on a fool of a man and a woman with a shotgun to come back and be surprised by his presence. Dammit dammit dammit dammit.

Wade watched them go from the doorway, scrambling up the face of the ridge. Jackson fell on his face and skidded a good ten feet backwards before getting stopped by a rock. Prince was mad, as witnessed by the choppy way he moved. No wasting, just cut-off kinda motions that looked a lot like a chopping hatchet. And Campos, well, Campos didn't care. He climbed like he did everything; efficiently. Wade didn't move from the door post until they hit the top of the ridge.

He sighed, turning back to the bookshelf and snagged a book off of one of the shelves (Hume, just to revisit the Scotsman). He plunked down on Magdelene's barrel, happy as a cat in the sun, and bent his head to considering Hume's understanding on Reason and Passion.


End file.
